Posts Tagged ‘RAW vs JPEG’

Reasonably often in these articles I suggest taking your photos using RAW image format, especially when discussing editing of photos. The same advice is given in many other articles and discussion fora across the web - if you're serious about photography, then you should probably be shooting RAW, not JPEG.

However, like all guidelines in photography, RAW format is not always the best choice. Depending on your photography style and workflow, JPEG format may actually be more suitable than RAW. In this article, then, we'll look at the various benefits of shooting straight JPEGs and avoiding RAW altogether.

Virtually all cameras will have a menu option that lets you choose the quality and size that images are saved at. On most higher end cameras (DSLRs, MILCs, and some Bridge cameras), along with various JPEG options, they will also have an option to save in RAW.

RAW is an image format that records the data from the camera sensor, and doesn't apply any manipulation (or only applies a minimal amount of manipulation) to this data. The camera also saves the sharpening, saturation, etc settings in the file, but does not apply them.

You then use a RAW conversion program on your computer to convert the RAW into a JPEG or TIFF file. As part of the RAW conversion process, you can use the settings saved in the file, or you can change the settings.

JPEG meanwhile, has all the sharpening, saturation, etc. settings applied in camera, which means you can't easily change or undo these settings later.

The Canon 7D has a unique feature that I really appreciate; it will let you shoot photos as both a JPEG and RAW image with a single push of the button. Doing so means pictures are taking up much more room on your storage card but it's worth the extra space. On some camera models that would also mean slower write times to the storage card, but the 7D has two internal computers to handle that chore so write speed is not an issue.

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